Bring Out Your Inner Beastie Boy with the Gamelan DJ App

Not many people have woken up of a morning and thought, “I know! We need to fuse the gamelan with some DJ turntables.” But that apparently happened for someone at Kowplink, the Indonesian startup whose first ever app is Gamelan DJ. The Android-only app works on both phones and Android tablets, though obviously you’ll get more screen real estate on a pad.

Gamelan DJ is proving to be a debut hit for the young Indonesian team, with Google Play indicating the app has 50,000 to 100,000 downloads in the three weeks since its launch, with an average approval rating of 4.6 stars.

In the app there are two turntables, nine preset noises that can be activated by tapping the numbers, and the twelve red squares start some mix tracks. And, yes, you can scratch. The gamelan part in the app is actually just the saron bars – so Gamelan DJ is really more about being the Beastie Boys than a master Javanese gamelan musician of the ancient courts.

Kowplink’s Lintang Enrico, the project manager, tells us the startup is based in Jogjakarta, was founded in January of this year, and intends to focus on music apps. He says that Gamelan DJ took seven months to build, but wasn’t made for specific monetization. He explains:

As a pilot project, we made Gamelan DJ as contribution to our traditional local culture – we want to make young people love the gamelan and can play the gamelan in the palm of their hands. And we’ve received a very good response from users and also media about Gamelan DJ. Some companies are interested in working together with us on some collaborations.

The team is six folks so far, two of whom work on the audio, but there’s only one programmer. That’s because, Lintang says, “All of us started in the music, and audio/sound industry, and some of us also work as composers, sound designers & DJs” – and due to the focus on music apps, of course.

He adds, “We are new in this startup and mobile apps world. We hope we can contribute to the local developer scene too.”

Gamelan DJ is free – and ad-free – in the Google Play store.